The Coming of the Arabic-Speaking People to the United States

What characterizes this book on Arab immigration and ethnicity is the author’s skill in tying together the general facts of Syrian emigration at the the turn of the twentieth century with the broader historical realities of Western colonialism and American Protestant missionary activity in the Arab East. Adele Younis’ research illuminates the causes, conditions, and nature of what she documents as a long-term interaction between Arabic-speaking peoples and the New World. Her approach is to place the contact points, settlement patterns, and problems of these immigrants and sojourners in a sociohistorical context. Understanding the American ethnic mosaic would be incomplete without her accurate and documented account. Until Younis’ research appeared, there was a void in our factual knowledge of the causes and consequences of the first period of emigration to the United States from Syria. In deference, to both the author and the reader, the editor has compiled a bibliographic guide which not only gives sources and references, but offers questions that future researchers on the Syrian, Lebanese, and Arab American might willingly and enthusiastically peruse.